We propose a model of parental altruism in relation with child habit formation, where children are unaware of their developing habits while young, and become cognizant of them only on growing up. We show that an altruistic mother (i) maintains the amount of income transferred to her child lower...

This paper examines the distributional characteristics of parametric reforms carried out when a planner faces an unexpected adverse shock to the pay-as-you-go system. When transfers are used to balance the system, we show that, even if the planner chooses a Ponzi scheme in the face of permanent...

The worldwide problem with pay-as-you-go, defined-benefits social security systems is not just financial. Through a dynamic, overlapping-generations model where forming a family and bearing and educating children are choice variables, we show that social security taxes and benefits generate...

I analyze the inter-vivos transfers and bequest decisions of 700,000 individuals during a period when the decision-maker receives negative news regarding life expectancy. The event that initiates the news is a health outcome. Expected mortality increases both the likelihood of transferring...

In this paper I use a multi-period OLG model to study how a demographic shock is distributed among different generations. In particular, I investigate whether a funded pension system allows for a smoother adjustment than an unfunded system. The results suggest that the answer to this question...

In this paper, we analyze the extent to which market forces create an incentive for cloning human beings. We show that a market for cloning arises if a large enough fraction of the clone?s income can be appropriated by its model. Only people with the highest ability are cloned, while people at...